For balloonists, reasons not to fly abound (unfortunately)

Balloon pilots love to talk about floating through the sky with the birds and looking out over woods and fields.

By Cheryl Wade

Balloon pilots love to talk about floating through the sky with the birds and looking out over woods and fields. What they talk about less is how iffy the whole business is.

The iffy part was borne out Friday night at the Midland County Fairgrounds when pilots at the RE/MAX Balloon Festival were certain, even before an all-hands meeting, that nobody was flying anywhere because the wind was too high. Locals who'd received tickets for Friday evening rides were told they'd have to come back this morning.

Anything over 10 mph is chancy because the wind could damage the balloon, said pilot Paul Frick of Pennsylvania. "It's just not safe."

Low clouds aren't good, either - they should be at least 1,000 feet up, said pilot Lisa Gano of Auburn. Fog is bad. "We need at least three miles visibility," she added. And if a balloon gets soaked with rain, it needs to be inflated just to dry out, or else mildew could form and that could degrade the fabric.

Gano said it would be pretty accurate to say pilots fly half the number of times, on average, that they're supposed to at festivals such as this. So that leaves lots of time to do other things.

"We get mopey and depressed, to a certain extent," said Mark Enszer, a pilot from Saginaw. "It's a little bit of a letdown. We want to fly; that's why we came here."

For Ohio pilot Sue Korosa, a bigger bummer than the obvious no-fly times are days when the weather looks really good and she finds out there's a fast wind from 500 feet in the air.

"Then you're up there wishing you were down," said one of her crew members, Ed Scannell of Prudenville.

Some pilots and their crew members lingered at their meeting tables. One talked of sharing balloon horror stories, but didn't go into details. One said shopping can be a time sucker; others talked about going out for dinner.

Enszer has a margarita machine - one of four at the hotel, he said. But another Saginaw pilot, Doug Hill, was quick to counter that "you can't drink alcohol within eight hours of a flight, so we have to act responsibly."

Korosa said the whole flying thing can be anticlimactic when it doesn't happen. But "there happens to be this little casino down the road," she said, referring to Mount Pleasant's Soaring Eagle Casino & Resort. She plans to visit there this afternoon. Still, when flights are called off, it's fun to "just hang around and talk and catch up with each other," she said.

Judging by all the chatter Friday evening, these pilots kept their spirits up, even if their balloons weren't. After all, a person always can check the computer for balloon flight information in hopes the next "tomorrow" will be better.

And, if one has a really good crew, it's not windy and there are no other problems, it's possible to get a balloon from the truck into the air in 15 minutes, Korosa said.